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Dessert

Lemon Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made from bread soaked in boiling water, butter, eggs, sugar, and lemon juice, topped with frosted egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lemon Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Pour boiling water over the bread slices in a bowl.

  2. Add butter, beaten egg yolks, sugar, and lemon juice; mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 20 minutes.

  2. Frost with the beaten egg whites mixed with 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  3. Brown the frosting in the oven.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaks up the liquid and forms the soft, custard-like body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they set and add richness to the custard.
Egg whites
Whipped to form a light meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue topping brown.
Lemons
Provide acidity and bright lemon flavour to balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Browning the frosting. Egg white meringue can go from pale to over-browned quickly. Watch it closely in the oven, since the sugar caramelises fast at high heat and can scorch before the topping is set.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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